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Interesting people, insightful points of view and incredible stories on what’s popping and not popping in marketing, tech, and culture you can use to win immediately. Brands, Beats and Bytes boldly stands at the intersection of brand, tech and culture. DC and Larry are fascinated with stories and people behind some of the best marketing in the business. No matter how dope your product, if your marketing sucks your company may suck too. #dontsuck
DC: Brand Nerds, before I, uh, go over the next question, uh, take you behind the scenes here.
As we were talking with Krista before we s- we got into the, um- Podcast content, uh, and, and, um, our super producer Jade said our content is editable, so if you, if you say something and you want it edited out, we can edit it later. And Jade says, "This is not a got you kind of a podcast," and it isn't. We're here to make you look good.
Krista says, "Can I say the F word?" And I said, "You absolutely can say the F word." Which leads me to question number three, what's your biggest F-up in your career? The biggest F-up, Krista, the big juicy one out there, and most importantly, what'd you learn from it?
Krista Patterson: Hmm. I'm gonna... Can I have two?
DC: You can have- Yeah two, yes.
Krista Patterson: They both kind of shaped my career and my own personal growth.
DC: Mm-hmm.
Krista Patterson: But the, this ... Well, okay. I'll just start. Um, part of the experience at Cisco, I, uh, was on a trajectory to become a director. Mm-hmm. I was managing small business marketing. We were a group they shipped out to a whole different site.
It was crazy. Mm-hmm. And the, at the time, one of my leaders said, "Okay, but you haven't fired anybody. We're not gonna promote you to a director till you fire people, and we're gonna give you three people that need to be fired, and you're gonna fire them."
LT: Mm. Okay.
Krista Patterson: Yep.
LT: Oh, okay.
Krista Patterson: And I didn't know enough to say like, "Hell no, I'm not doing that," but I did it, okay?
Okay. So I am a highly sympa- sympathetic, empathetic human, and emotional admittedly. And in order for me to do that, I had to compartmentalize to a degree that I didn't even know was possible.
DC: Mm.
Krista Patterson: And so I did that. I was a robot in firing them. I didn't really know why we were firing them- Mm ... but I used the lines they gave me, and I did it.
LT: Yeah.
Krista Patterson: And I'm gonna fast-forward 15 years about. Mm. 10 to 15. And I was at a school function for one of my children, and I saw somebody that I worked with at Cisco, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, there's John. I need to go say hello to him." And I went and said hello to him. I said, "Gosh, John, I haven't seen you in so long.
How are you?" And he said, "Yeah, you haven't seen me since the day you fired me." And I had forgotten that I did. Oh, wow.
DC: Oh, wow.
Krista Patterson: And I went home and was sick to my stomach.
DC: Yeah.
Krista Patterson: And from that day forward, I decided I'm gonna cry in meetings if I want. I'm gonna do things that are true to my heart. I- Wow ... people are gonna know me, and I am not going to do this compartmentalizing thing again.
I can't. I'm not doing that.
DC: Mm.
Krista Patterson: It's just not okay. So that was a huge learning for me, and I think positively impact people that I worked with going forward, and I'm sorry for the people behi- you know, that were behind that moment. Mm-hmm. Because I wasn't the best version of me, for sure. Mm-hmm. Because I was more focused on getting ahead and getting the next title than being me.
DC: Oof. Mm-hmm.
Krista Patterson: And that was a fuck up, for sure. Sorry.
DC: Oh.
Krista Patterson: That was a, that was a, a bad thing. And I ... Well, obviously I remember it so clearly that that wasn't okay That's the first one.
DC: Wow.
LT: Yeah. D- dare I say this is one of the best ones we've ever
DC: had? Th- th- this is, this is without question, yeah. Um-
LT: Yeah. Y- this is- Uh-
in the, uh, of 200, this is about in the, easily in the top five.
DC: This, this is top, top five. Um- Yeah.
Krista Patterson: Top five F-ups. Yay me!.
DC: Yeah, this, this- ... this is top five. Uh, the, the... Well, it's, it's the learning, the insight coming from it. Exactly.
LT: That's what we're talking about.
DC: This, it's- Yes ... coming from it. All right.
Uh, so Krista Your ability at that point to compartmentalize, world-class. You, you, your brain did such a great job-
LT: Mm-hmm ...
DC: that you did not remember what you did. Mm-hmm. You, you literally had no clue.
LT: That's why Tr- that's why Crystal described it that way, D, right? Y-
DC: yes. Yeah. Yes.
Krista Patterson: Yes.
DC: Where did you learn that ability to compartmentalize?
Krista Patterson: I, um, gosh, after all the work I've done personally, I'm sure that it was something childhood.
DC: Mm-hmm.
Krista Patterson: Um, and that's a whole nother show. Definitely. Okay. Probably, probably moderated by a therapist, right? Uh, I'm, I'm sure that it was a childhood situation- Okay ... that- Okay ... that incubated that. Mm-hmm. Um, actually, the harder part, I think, is to be yourself and to- Mm-hmm allow whatever emotion is happening for you in that moment to happen.
DC: Yeah.
Krista Patterson: Mm-hmm. As a professional, you know, I had a conversation with somebody yesterday, I think that women are often told, or not so much now, uh, but certainly in the beginning of my career, emotion, there's no place for that at work.
DC: Yep.
Krista Patterson: And now that it's bring your s- whole self to work and all of that, I'm just- Yeah, yeah ... I'm actually really happy to see that shift. Yeah. And it kind of ha- maybe that experience happened a little before some of that. It's just such a hard thing, A, to bring, to allow yourself to be you.
DC: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Krista Patterson: Um, and, and to compartmentalize it.
I think they're both difficult.
LT: Yeah.
Krista Patterson: I, I als- I often say that a brand, like a personal brand, is you on your best day. Mm. It should be authentic and slightly aspirational. And so me on my best day was not that person.
DC: Got it.
Krista Patterson: And who I want to be as a human, and to have a brand that reflects that, I have to behave that way.
DC: Got it. Whoa.
LT: That's awesome.
DC: Whoa. All right, Larry, if you don't have a comment to that one, let's h- let's hear a second one, but do you have a comment?
LT: I, I have a quick... D, I'm gonna put you on the spot here, um, because I think it's really relevant. And y- he, you've told this but it was in one of our ca- podcasts before but it was a while ago and I think it should be resurfaced because of being your authentic self.
Can you tell Krista and the Brand Nerds also what, when you first got to Coca-Cola and you were struggling and you had an epiphany of what you needed to do?
DC: Uh, thanks, Larry. I, I will share it. Uh, so Krista, um, because of what Larry said earlier, Coca-Cola being at that time the number one brand in the world-
LT: Mm-hmm
DC: um, um, and the most valuable brand in the world, um, going to Coca-Cola at that time as a marketer is the equivalent of right now in tech people going to Apple or NVIDIA.
Krista Patterson: NVIDIA, yeah. Or,
DC: uh- Right ... or Cisco. Right. Or Microsoft. These b- these behemoths, uh, that are, um, running tech today globally. That's what Coke was to marketers.
Mm-hmm. Those that were established and aspiring marketers certainly, uh, for me. So I got, um, my MBA from a school here in Atlanta called Clark Atlanta University. So this is a historically Black college and university, and I also did an undergrad at Alabama A&M, also an HBCU. Coca-Cola recruited MBAs from all over the world at the best schools, the best business schools all over the world.
And, uh, they happened to also recruit at, uh, Clark Atlanta University, but we were not in any way thinking that we were gonna see Clark Atlanta University, uh, rankings of MBA with- Mm-hmm ... Harvard, Wharton, Oxford- Mm-hmm ... um, uh, Fuqua, uh, i- any of these, any of these, you know, prestigious MBA schools. So what I decided, because these were my peers from these schools, Krista, is that I was going to be the best version of those MBAs.
You talk about on your best day, uh, you know, you, you, you, you wanna be you on your best day. I thought for me, me on my best day was to be- Mm-hmm ... a version of those MBAs.
LT: Mm-hmm.
DC: And I failed miserably. I was scratching myself. I had holes in the knees of my fine Italian suits because I was rubbing my knees 'cause I was...
Again, I didn't realize this. Much like you, you didn't realize it. Right. I didn't realize it, uh, at the time. And because it was going so horrifically bad, I decided one day, this is the epiphany that Larry said, I said, "Hmm
I've gone to two HBCUs, and I grew up in the inner city of Detroit. I've survived things that most humans cannot survive. I'm going to be me. I know some things that the rest of these MBAs from these wonderful universities do not know. I'm gonna be true to that, and then we'll see where it, see where it goes.
And it changed my career and changed my life.
Krista Patterson: I love that.
DC: Yep.
Krista Patterson: Such a great story.
DC: Yeah.
LT: Isn't it? Second youngest- Thank you very much ... Brandweek Marketer of the Year to August Busch the IV, so he really doesn't count. So that, that's where DC Shift brought Sprite to go fwoop. He won't say that, I will. Okay.
Uh- sorry.
Y- So Krista had another one.
DC: That she,
Krista Patterson: she does,
DC: yes.
Krista Patterson: I do. And this is more of a, um, cautionary tale maybe. I, I left Cisco, uh, as a director to... Well, I thought I was having a nervous breakdown. It turned out I was pregnant with my third child, so that was crazy. Mm. Um, I left. I consulted for a while, and I, they wanted me to come back full time for my- Mm-hmm
second tour of duty.
DC: Mm-hmm.
Krista Patterson: And they hired me as an individual contributor. Mm. And I took it.
DC: Mm.
Krista Patterson: And then I climbed that same ladder again.
DC: Mm.
Krista Patterson: Now, for the years that I was climbing, they got the value of a director of marketing-
DC: Right. Mm-hmm ...
Krista Patterson: and paid me as an individual contributor.
DC: Right. Mm.
Krista Patterson: That is on me.
DC: Yeah.
Krista Patterson: Because, well, I, I don't typically hire this way as a... I'm not looking for a bargain when I'm hiring people. Mm-hmm. I'm not. Mm. So I didn't learn- We feel the same
DC: way ...
Krista Patterson: I didn't learn that till later, right? So I was like, oh, well, yeah, now I'm a mom and, you know, three... I guess this is the all I can get.
DC: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
Krista Patterson: That I feel like was a pretty major personal F-up
DC: Another good one. Larry?
Krista Patterson: Yeah.
LT: A good one. There's nothing to add to that, but that's, that, that's something, Brand Nerds, that you need to tuck in the front of your mind on that one.
DC: This next question, my brother Louis, has to do with failure, a loss, one that you would consider one of the biggest, if not the biggest of your career. And this was on you, Louis, not, not any, well, the private equity folks, they decided to, to cut- Mm-hmm
the investment. None of that bullshit. Just on you, you made the mistake, Louis. And most importantly, for the Brand Nerds, and take yourself back to the seat you were in, in C- in Cambridge, what did you learn from it? And think about yourself back then, what you'd want to say to yourself about what you learned from said mistake so that you could help yourself either avoid that mistake or do better.
Go ahead.
Louis Monoyudis: Absolutely. And it's a, such a great question. I'm glad that you bring it up. The common thread I would imagine in a lot of the responses you receive to this question has to do with hubris. So in mythology- Yep ... a famous story of hubris is Icarus, who flew- Icarus. The
DC: son, the son of Daedalus. Flying too close to the sun now.
That's a warm Louis.
Louis Monoyudis: Who flies too close to the sun, and his wings melt even though he was cautioned not to. And he kept- Right ... getting higher and higher, and it was fine, and it was fine until it wasn't. I
LT: got this. I'm good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Louis Monoyudis: I'm good. So the- This is a key element of the keynote addresses I do, and it's really, I think, important for anybody who is a founder or thinking about being a founder, or is at a founder-led brand.
Which is- Mm ... so much of being at a brand like that or of starting your own company- Mm-hmm ... is autobiographical. And for a certain point of that company's success, all of the decisions can run through your own personal filter because you are your core target audience. There comes a tipping point, though, when you may no longer be your core audience, and for the company or the brand to continue to scale, you have to get out of your own way, drop your ego, and say, "I'm gonna listen to my customers as opposed to just going with my gut instinct."
Mm. Which means you need to have data infrastructure around you, you need to have a listening process in place. Mm-hmm. And this gets to my failure. Mm-hmm. So after leaving corporate fashion, I started Cut On Your Bias, which we talked about, designer level crowdsourced e-commerce platform. And I had this incredible network of people from the fashion industry living in New York who were my beta testers, and they all loved it.
Who wouldn't wanna go online and help design stuff with different brands and- So cool ... wait a few weeks for it to get shipped to you? But what happened is I was surrounding myself with people who reinforced my own way of thinking. And whenever I would present my idea to someone who said, "I don't really get it," or, "I don't really want to play designer, that's why they're designers and I'm not a designer," or, "I really just want to buy something and have it arrive the next day, not wait for it to get produced," which was part of the model.
I said, "You know what? They just don't get it. I am so far ahead of the curve- ... that I'm gonna target the early adopters." Right. "And by the time I'm ready to scale to them, they're gonna be ready to buy what I'm selling."
DC: They'll figure it out.
Louis Monoyudis: They'll figure it out. And that was my hubris of not- Mm ... actually actively listening and only hearing what I wanted to hear.
So yes, Cut On Your Bias had some success. And we, to make matters even worse, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, all these publications were interviewing me. I was going on panels about the future of digital fashion. Like, all the signals and validation were there except, at the end of the day, I couldn't scale the business beyond those early adopters.
And I got to a point where I said, "You know what? Either I have to completely transform this company, or I'm gonna have to shut it down and look for my next opportunity," which is what happened.
LT: This is good, D. This is really good.
DC: Go ahead, brother. Go ahead, Larry.
LT: So question for you, Louis. So you described that really well, and in retrospect, were there simply just not enough of you and your friends to grow this, to have this be a real business, and you didn't understand that at first?
Like you said, you had the hubris of thinking, "Well, people would just... don't get this." By the way, I could totally see myself making that same mistake. Um, a- or, or was it you were too soon? Like, you n- you know what I mean? Like, if you had to do it all over again, would you even do it at all, I guess is what I'm trying to ask.
Louis Monoyudis: Great question. So would I do it again? Absolutely. Was it incredibly painful, probably the most painful professional experience I've had? Absolutely. And you need those scars. We all talk- You do ... about embracing failure. But it sucks at the time. Yeah. You really are questioning every decision you've made that led you there.
Was it the wrong place, wrong time? I don't think so. Can you think of any other designer-level crowdsourced platforms out there? No, because- No. No ... there were others that have come and gone, and they've either pivoted into other business models, or they just didn't make it as well. So it's just not quite the type of concept.
I think we are seeing an increase in terms of customization that people can do. Right. But it's a very small subset. Um- Right ... if you think about men's dress shirts, do you want a mitered cuff or a regular cuff? Like- Right ... that's an easy decision. Right. Are you asking women to, like, think about, like, different, completely different silhouettes, and have to make some tough decisions around those?
It's not really something that's built into the e-com process.
LT: Right. Interesting. Yeah. Very cool.
DC: Bernard, Larry gave you your flowers at the top. You have had enormous success. These are the peaks. You've also talked about the valleys. This next question has to do with one of these valleys, and that is what is the biggest F up in your career?
When we say F up, Bernard, we're not talking about one where, well, if my manager hadn't done this, or the market shifted, this is one where you thought you were right back to your earlier question in the get comfy section about people trading on right and grades and smartness. You thought you were right, you were dead ass wrong.
You made the mistake. And most importantly, Bernard, what did you learn from said F up?
Bernard Bell: Well, you know, I have a lot of them, but, and all of them are big. And so what I realized is, you know, I have said sometimes Bernard, you have a big personality and so sometimes the things you do because you teed it up, trying to be the man.
Right. The, the, the, um, the F up and I'm assuming that's capital E, FF.
DC: Yeah. You, you can, as, you don't need all the letters. You don't need them all. But yes.
Bernard Bell: So when I was, when I was at TV one and I, I was second person there and so I basically hired everybody and helped build a culture and everything. And I was feeling really good about myself.
It was my fir I was senior vice president. It was my first senior vice president title, and it was a real senior vice president. Like he had equity and the salary was good and everything.
LT: Yeah.
Bernard Bell: And so I had just come out of HGTV and this whole lifestyle programming and I felt like I knew it. I was a 13th person at HGTV.
The founder was a UNC alum. So I had a little gravitas coming in and, uh, ego got big. I'll talk about it at some point, but, so get the TV one and. We are trying to make some programming decisions. And so I had decided this lifestyle programming, that's what everybody, that's what the black people need. And so, 'cause you didn't see, uh, like design shows with black folks.
You didn't go into homes with black people and everything. So I was like, I know, this is it. Gardening, home interiors, architecture, so forth. So I get the board to allocate $55 million for us to do programming lifestyle program. And you know, we, I'm, I'm
DC: sorry, Ben, our, what year is this?
Bernard Bell: This would've been, uh, about 2004 or five maybe.
DC: So we're talking 50, $50 million back then.
Bernard Bell: Right. And that's 55. 'cause five a lot.
DC: Oh, 55. 55 million. Yeah. 55. Oh wow. Okay.
Bernard Bell: And so, uh, so we're going through all the programming. It's our first programming slate. And when you're. Back then you would introduce your program and you'd either do it at a upfront,
DC: upfront,
Bernard Bell: so advertisers come, uh, we would show it internally so that all the sales team knew it.
They wouldn't go out and sell. And my job was to get distribution. So we would go out to all the cable systems across the country, and now I'm in charge of all of it plus Canada. So we get all the cable systems across the country. And the metrics were, if you get owned in New York City, New York City had a million subscribers.
Mm-hmm. The me, the financial metrics were Time Warner. Manhattan would pay us say a quarter per subscriber per month. Mm-hmm. If you do the math, you got a million dollars 25 cents
DC: Carriage, brother carriage.
Bernard Bell: Yeah, I understand. Right. And so with the increase in that, they were 10 year deals, so once you got a deal done, you knew 10 years.
So we could do programming deals knowing that the future revenue was coming in.
LT: And that's without any money coming from advertising. I just
Bernard Bell: Correct.
This is all, yeah, this is not,
LT: yeah. This is distribution carriage is DC alluded to. So brand nerd. That's just like foundation money. Go ahead.
Bernard Bell: And so, so when you paid your cable bill back in the day, part of that, you pay $150 or 200.
Part of that. I got 25 cent of that. SBN got a dollar history channel got 10 cents, so forth and so on.
DC: Right? Yeah.
Bernard Bell: And so $55 million shows go up on the air. Nobody's watching, nobody's watching. We picked, we, we, and there were a lot of men there. We picked hosts for the shows. Mm-hmm. That were beautiful light-skinned women.
DC: Yeah.
Bernard Bell: And what we found was that a lot of the people who were watching were working women or single moms and they were home during the day. 'cause this is daytime program. Mm-hmm. And you know, back then nobody, people weren't working from home, they'd go to work. Mm-hmm. And so what we found, $55 million one season later, nobody's watching.
Mm. So we amortized it, we amortized it 55,000 over 10 years to go along with the distribution. So it's really $5 million a year. Five and some change. But I had to go before the board and say, you know what? Ratings are down. And so the question was, was why did we do lifestyle programming? Mm. And, and Larry, do you know the reason we did lifestyle programming?
I thought I knew the black viewing consumer behavior experience. Mm. Because I thought I was smart and I thought I knew my people. And I thought I knew the industry and I thought, and I thought, and I thought, and I thought, without doing the market research, right? Mm-hmm. With customer discovery, interviewing the customer, finding out who the customer is.
Mm-hmm. Going so deep as to what's the playlist that our customers are listening to. Right. What cars are they driving? What's hanging up in their closet? Right. And had we done some person, some customer personas, but I was so smart, right? Mm-hmm. Got this big job, got this title, and I need to make a name for myself to let them know that I'm a veteran.
'cause I, you know, I've been in the industry for a minute, and any other person, I believe mm-hmm. Would've been let go. Mm. But because I had a relationship with the CEO.
DC: Yeah.
Bernard Bell: And you know, we were being a bit entrepreneurial. We raised $130 million to do this.
DC: Mm-hmm.
Bernard Bell: So, you know, you do the math. Now we taking five, even though it's 55, we're amortizing over 10 years, so we're really pulling five off the balance sheet.
DC: Yeah.
Bernard Bell: But it was a public, um, it was a, you know what it did for me, it made me realize that, number one, I was not as smart as I thought I was. Mm-hmm. And I really thought I was really smart. I mean, like, I thought I was, I hate to say it, but I really thought I was smart. Smart. Mm-hmm. And what can happen many times when you have success in one vertical, you know, we leapfrog into other verticals and we make the assumption that the same competence that we had in this one vertical, we take it over to other areas.
And that's not smart. Now I don't do that anymore. Um, but that was a, that was, if you can imagine going to our board meeting and having to defend that. You see what I'm saying? And it was, uh, it was, if, if, if that, don't put your ego in your back pocket DC I don't, I don't know what does, but that was, and sadly, that wasn't the biggest one, but that was the biggest one I wanna talk about.
That's a big one though, a big one.
DC: That, that is a great one.
DC: Sheldon, you've been, uh, running your own shop for a while. You ha- you've had a, um, a meandering- ... uh, matriculation through your career As you look back, what's the biggest F-up that you've encountered that was on you, your thinking? Not your business partners, not your partner in life, not some colleague, not some above you manager or executive or C-suite person, but you made a decision or a call, it was a F-up, and most importantly, what, what did you learn from it, Sheldon?
Sheldon Poon: Um, so I think the biggest F-up we're still in the middle of, to be honest. Okay. Like, not in the middle of... I, I, maybe not the middle. We're seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. I think I'm almost out of it at this point.
DC: Okay.
Sheldon Poon: Um, but I went against one of the rules that I put for myself when I founded the company.
DC: Mm-hmm.
Sheldon Poon: And, uh, lo and behold, it came back to bite me in the ass.
DC: Ooh.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah. Ooh. Um, when, when I was, uh... Before I started my company, you know, I, I had friends who were in, uh, in various industries. A couple of them were working with marketing agencies. Um, and I had seen firsthand a couple of agencies that had not set themselves up properly, where they were beholden to, like, three big clients, and when one of them left, they would have to do, like, a round of layoffs, right?
DC: Ah, okay.
Sheldon Poon: I was... Yeah. So you see where I'm going with this. So when I started Drive, I was like, "Okay, this is not something I want- I wanna make sure I don't put myself in that situation."
DC: Mm-hmm.
Sheldon Poon: But lo and behold, like, uh, what ended up happening was, uh, one of my, uh, uh, very close friends, he works in the finance space.
Um, and, uh, he, he, he came across this deal. He was working with a group. They had just got their funding, and they were in the process of buying a whole bunch of companies, and we started consulting with them. And we, uh, came up with this plan where one of the, one of the things that they will look for in terms of what companies to buy was companies that had solid foundations but were weak in terms of marketing.
So there, there was potential there to kind of- Mm-hmm ... grow the revenue, right? Very, very basic play. Very standard thing.
DC: Yeah, yeah.
Sheldon Poon: Everything was good. They went around, they started buying up these companies. They started handing out, uh, these contracts, and they were g- too good to pass up. Even though I re- I recognized at the time that we were getting in bed with, like, a single kinda s- source, like, a single point of failure-
LT: Mm-hmm
Sheldon Poon: uh, the, the monthly retainers that were coming in from these new projects, um, were going to double our revenue just overnight. Um- Hmm ... so I was like- How do you
LT: say no to that?
Sheldon Poon: How do you say no to that, right? Yeah. So I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna go into this. Why? Like, eyes open. I'm going against one of the rules, uh, but I'm gonna plan ahead for it."
So financially what I did was I didn't change anything in terms of my, uh, in terms of, um, our operating expenses, or as much as, uh, as, as much as, like, uh, we could avoid as possible. Any profits that we had, we put it back in the company and just kinda held it because I was like, "This is for sure gonna blow up in our face, so let's, let's hang on to this money just when the rainy day comes."
Uh, the problem was that we had to grow our team. So during that time we actually, uh, grew our team to... not- nothing crazy, but we were at 15 people at that point.
LT: Somebody's gotta do the work.
Sheldon Poon: Somebody's gotta do the work, right? So we grew our team to about 15 people. Um, and because of that our payroll went up, obviously, and, uh, we were, we were just kind of, uh, we were doing, uh, uh, quite well actually with these contracts until they had a principal funder.
They decided to pull out. There was some sort of problem between the group and the funder, and then because of that they could no longer hit their milestones with these companies. Hmm. The companies, uh, their funding uphold, uh, their, their revenue... uh, not their revenue, but their, the funding that, uh, the funds that they had and the plans- Got it
they had in place to continue growing got messed up. So they started cutting our contracts, and then we found ourselves in exactly the situation I didn't wanna find myself, which is, uh, you know, we've now increased our head count, we've increased our, our expenses, but now we've lost this source of revenue, and what do we do about that?
So fortunately we had that, that, uh, the extra funds that were sitting around. But what it turns out is that when I look back on it, the real screw-up was not taking the contracts. That was not the problem. The problem was when I took the contracts, I was too personally invested in making sure that it would work out, 'cause I think I got nervous knowing that there was gonna be an end date- I didn't do a proper job of onboarding the clients.
I didn't do a proper job of just handing off the work and letting the team do it. It took up too much of my time-
DC: Mm ...
Sheldon Poon: to manage those relationships, to try to keep these going as long as possible. And because it shifted me from working on the company to working in the company without me realizing it, all of a sudden we had- we lost our front of house, and there wasn't anyone doing that networking to continue bringing in the fresh work- Ah
and the new clients.
DC: Yeah.
Sheldon Poon: And I only realized that after the bottom fell out and I was like, "Oh my God, our pipeline is gone."
LT: Right.
Sheldon Poon: That was the mistake. Ah. Yeah. So we're still dealing with that now. And not to say that I didn't try during that time. I kinda knew what was going on, so I had tried to hire a guy to do sales, but our foundation wasn't there.
LT: Not the same.
Sheldon Poon: It's not the same. So our, when our pipeline disappeared and our funding, uh, and our, our, our lucrative contracts were gone, that's when I started having to make some difficult decisions and start cutting back and, and, uh, we had s- we had a, we had a few folks that they, they had come on a short-term contract 'cause I knew this was gonna happen.
Uh, so they finished their contracts. They left. We brought our head count back down a little bit.
DC: Mm-hmm.
Sheldon Poon: Um, but we were in, we were in a bad spot. We're still not in a great spot now, like we're still kinda getting out of it. Um- Mm-hmm ... but, uh, that was a huge, huge kinda kick in the teeth. And one of the things that came about that too was that during that time, it un- uh, so it was a domino effect, right?
So the initial, the initial FUP was looking at this and going like, "I gotta take this. I can't not take a contract that's gonna double the revenue of the company."
DC: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sheldon Poon: So that was the big F. That was the first mistake. The revealing mistake was the fact that I, I, I, I ended up working in the projects when I should have just been handing them off.
But the final thing was the reason the sales guy that we had hired during that time, 'cause we had a bit of money, the reason he failed was because we set him up for failure, and I think that's the thing that we're still trying to recover from.
DC: Mm.
Sheldon Poon: Our, our own, um, uh, marketing efforts, our own branding efforts, uh, had fallen by the wayside because we were focused on the client work we had.
My networking had fallen off a cliff. Uh, we weren't doing the same things in the past that had been bringing in attention and revenue. Um, and those cracks are still there, and we're still trying to patch that up to get us kinda back on track. Um, so yeah, it's been, it's been a, that, that's probably been the biggest, uh, biggest FUP so far.
And when I say so far, it's because I noticed that the bigger the company gets, the bigger these FUPs are. Yeah. So until the next one.
LT: Yeah.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah.
LT: D, thoughts?
DC: What a story. Sheldon, if you were going to put a percentage-
Sheldon Poon: Yep ...
DC: on someone who's leading a company or team leading the company, what percentage of their day-to-day time should be placed on working on the business versus working in the business?
What percentage would you give to on versus in?
Sheldon Poon: I, that's a good question, but I, I don't know that it, it works out that cleanly. Okay. I, I've seen... And it, but, but it depends on philosophy, right? Mm-hmm. I think I've seen a lot of, by many metrics, very successful companies where the owner was 100% focused just on getting new business, getting new contracts, figuring out the next, like, whatever move.
Uh, actually, one of my, one of my best friends did this, and he admits that this was a huge mistake. He was 100% investment- invested in getting new contracts and making sure that- He- ... he was handling that side of things. He left 100% to his operating team.
DC: Hmm.
Sheldon Poon: Ah. What his operator did was he created this toxic culture where everybody was infighting, many, many cliques.
Hmm. Everybody was backstabbing each other. All sorts of weird polit- Like, I, we talk about it now and I'm like, "Dude, how did you not get sued?" He's like, "I have no idea." Like, there was so many- And he
LT: was 0% involved is what you're
Sheldon Poon: saying. So- He was zero... Yeah, he was 0% involved.
LT: Yeah.
Sheldon Poon: Uh, but he was making a ton of money at the time, and everything was running great, but ultimately, uh, the, the company just fell apart because the operations- Sure like killed it. Uh, I've also seen other guys that they're just so 100%, like, deep in the operations. They have everything running like clockwork, and they have business just flowing to them because they just set that up where they can just be there on the ground, schmoozing with their existing clients, making sure that everything's going well, keeping the culture up-
DC: Mm-hmm
Sheldon Poon: and everything's fine. So I, I don't know that there's, like, a magic number. For me personally-
DC: Yeah.
Sheldon Poon: Okay ... yeah, for me personally, I'm, I'm very lucky that I had a very particular, um, uh, mindset of how to build the team and how to build the culture- Mm-hmm ... at Drive. So everybody gets along, like, I, I think pretty well at our, in our team, and our philosophy is that everybody learns, everybody teaches.
So everybody teaches the new stuff that they've learned. And I always, I, I ask the interns, like, "You know, what's going on with you guys? Like, show me something new 'cause you guys have-" Love that ... "a completely different res- perspective."
DC: Yeah.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah. Um, so out of that, uh, our operations are pretty clean. Uh, Brent, our head of operations, does a phenomenal job of making sure the shop is taken care of.
So I personally should be spending 80% of my time just working on the company, and only 20% checking in to make sure things are going well, and I know- Mm-hmm ... more or less what we're doing so I can represent it properly.
DC: Mm-hmm.
Sheldon Poon: Um, but that's a personal split, I think. That would be my ideal. I don't think I'm quite there yet.
I'm still a little bit too in the weeds for some of the things, just because I like, I have that engineering mindset. I like playing with code. But, uh, yeah, I should be spending 80% of my time, um, probably just working on the, the front of house, as it were.
DC: Thank you.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah.
Thanks for listening to Brands, Beats & Bites. The executive producers of Brands, Beats & Bites are Jeff Shirley, Darryl "DC" Cobbin, Larry Taman, Jade Tate, and Tom Dioro.
DC: The podfather.
LT: And if you do like this podcast, please subscribe and share. And for those on Apple Podcasts, if you're so inclined, we love those excellent reviews. We hope you enjoyed this podcast, and we look forward to next time, where we will have more insightful and enlightening talk about marketing.